Why All the Buzz About Taiwan? | Opinion

Why are we hearing so much about Taiwan these days? Why did former House speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the country lead to threats against it and the United States from the Chinese People's Liberation Army? Why did the visit of Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen with current House speaker Kevin McCarthy raise so many hackles in Beijing? Why did Congress set up a Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party? Why did President Joe Biden pledge to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion? What do we need to know about this island nation of 20 million people just a bit larger in area than my home state of Maryland? Perhaps most importantly, why do Americans need to care?

Stepping into the not-so-way-back time machine, we all remember COVID. An abundance of evidence now points to the pandemic having originated in a lab in far-off Wuhan, China. For the purposes of understanding Taiwan, we don't need to know much about Wuhan or the Chinese Communist Party's near-total lockdown that went into effect following the lab leak. What we do need to recall is the global supply chain crisis that followed. We all learned a new acronym, PPE, for the personal protective equipment like masks and gowns rapidly vanishing from hospital shelves. In short order we also got used to talking about the chips shortage—not potato chips, but microelectronic chips, also known as semiconductors.

This was when we started hearing about Taiwan. We learned about TSMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor company that churns out the world's most sophisticated chips that are used to power our defense equipment, our medical equipment, our computer equipment, and any and all of the latest technologies that we took for granted pre-COVID.

TSMC's headquarters is located just across the Taiwan Strait, about 100 miles from Mainland China. Mainland China is ruled by the genocidal Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which views the democratic nation of Taiwan as a renegade province that must be reunited with the mainland, not as a free and prosperous democracy. It harasses Taiwanese defense and civilian populations in the South China Sea. It conducts overflights of Taiwanese territory in order to frighten the civilian population below. CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping regularly threatens invasion, as he did once again right after McCarthy hosted Taiwan's democratically elected president in early April.

Why should Americans care?

We should care because democratically elected governments cannot and should not be overthrown by genocidal dictators. We care because Taiwan's success in semiconductors is key to America's—and the free world's—continued prosperity through innovation. We care because the Taiwanese people have longstanding relations with millions of Americans. We care because Taiwan is investing in its own defense so America will not shed blood and treasure in a "forever war" that is very far away.

We care because a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would mean one of two things for America, and the rest of the world. One possible outcome is the total destruction of TSMC's manufacturing capability due either to the People's Liberation Army's invasion or to self-destruction by Taiwan's military, which would mean the effective shutdown of our own technology ecosystem. The other, even worse, possibility is that an invasion could lead to China's takeover of TSMC and all of its manufacturing capabilities and intellectual property, followed by their swift transfer to mainland China, giving the PRC a competitive edge over all technologies in the world. Those next-generation iPhones we cannot live without would be gone. Smart technologies like computerized dashboards in all of our cars would be gone. Biotechnology innovations bringing things like vaccines and new drugs to patients would take decades to bring to market. Our defense structures would be compromised or entirely disabled. The way of life that we have grown used to would be wiped out without access to the vital technology produced in Taiwan.

This tiny island nation commands an outsized amount of American attention. Now we understand that it does so for a very good reason. But understanding the buzz about Taiwan is just the first part. As a nation, America must stand united with Taiwan in the face of a terrifying aggressor. When Xi Jinping says he will retake Taiwan, we should take him at his word—at least that he will try. The time to prepare to counter an aggressor is before the aggressor has an opportunity to act, not after he has done so.

Taiwanese and American officials talk about Taiwan being a "porcupine," a target that is too difficult, dangerous, and uncomfortable for the PRC to swallow. The demonstration of Taiwan's porcupine traits should be discussed publicly with great regularity. Taiwan, along with its great and numerous friends across both parties in the U.S. and increasingly with solidarity from important allies in Japan, Australia, the U.K., and the EU, must demonstrate that an attack on the island would be an attack on the free world, an attack on innovation, and an attack on our core democratic values. The theft of TSMC's intellectual property by China in an attempt to replicate the company's miraculous innovation would similarly be a theft of the world's innovation.

Taiwan, the United States, and our allies must present a firm and unequivocal position. No one wants to fight a war in the South China Sea, across the Taiwan Strait, or in the streets of Taipei. We want to make even the thought of such an undertaking a non-starter for Xi Jinping's military planners in the People's Liberation Army.

Taiwan may seem like it's too far away to care about. But think how you'd feel if your father's medical treatment was delayed indefinitely because the global supply chain for advanced pharmacological products was stopped due to a chip shortage. Or how you'd feel if you couldn't replace a broken cell phone. Or how you'd feel if your child's future as an engineer was left in the hands of a dictator in Beijing who vows to displace the United States as the world's number-one superpower. Now you understand why there's all the buzz about Taiwan.

Bonnie Glick is the former Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer of the US Agency for International Development. She was the inaugural Director of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.